Thomas Pollando, a former Sayreville councilman and Democratic municipal chairman who was facing bribery charges connected to a probe of a local strip club, died today. He was 74.
He had been indicted on charges that he sought payment from a local strip club in exchange for using his political connections to influence the outcome of a law enforcement investigation.
Detectives from the prosecutor’s office were conducting electronic surveillance of XXXV Gentlemen’s Club (Club 35) when they watched Pollando, a former councilman, accept several thousand dollars in cash. He was still in possession of the cash when Pollando was arrested in August 2022. He quickly resigned from his party post, and several appointed positions in Sayreville, and lost his job at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority
The fourteen-count indictment alleged that as party chairman, he directed a Sayreville council candidate’s campaign funds to be used to pay for personal expenditures and ordered that election records be falsified to cover up that payment.
He served on the Middlesex County Planning Board and the Sayreville Economic and Redevelopment Agency. He also held a $70,955-per-year state job at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.
Pollando was elected to the Sayreville Borough Council in 2001 and 2004, served as council president, and unsuccessfully challenged Republican Mayor Kennedy O’Brien in 2007. He sought a return to the council in 2009 but lost by roughly 1,100 votes.